Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5) (23 page)

“Good morning, Maggie,” he said.

“Mr. Boudreaux.”

“I’m just trying to help this one become a little more enthusiastic about surviving,” he said.

Boudreaux had more than a dozen full-sized mango trees, and several more potted ones, of many varieties. They did very well, despite the fact that Apalach was generally too far north for mangos. He spent a lot of money on heaters and greenhouses and tarps to make that happen, and Maggie knew he did it all for Miss Evangeline.

Boudreaux tossed the yellow leaves to the grass and wiped his hands on his pants. “It’s an unusual pleasure to see you here, Maggie,” he said.

“I just have a few minutes,” she said.

“Let’s go up on the porch,” he said. “Amelia just brought out some fresh Indian River grapefruit juice.”

He gestured for her to go ahead of him, and she almost said she didn’t have time, but she skipped it. It seemed to be a routine for them, either oysters or a beverage.

She walked back up to the porch and he followed her, then led the way to a small table and chairs, where a pitcher of deep red juice sat sweating.

Maggie sat down as Boudreaux took a couple of glasses from the small bar and brought them to the table. She watched him as he sat down and poured their juice. Then she took a sip before she looked back up at him. He was waiting, as he always did, those eyes going right through her.

“I just wanted to let you know that the Crawford case has been wrapped up,” she said. “Without you.”

“So I hear,” he said. Maggie sighed at him. “People like to tell me things.”

Maggie nodded and watched him take a sip of his juice.

“I was surprised to hear about Mrs. Crawford,” he said. “She didn’t seem the type. Maybe I’m not as perceptive as I think.”

“One of the things I don’t like about my job is that people still surprise me,” Maggie said. “The ugliness in people.”

He watched her for a moment, and she worried that she might have offended him. She hadn’t actually thought of him, or the things he’d done or been rumored to have done, when she’d said it.

“Why did you go to work for the Sheriff’s Office, Maggie? It doesn’t seem to make you particularly happy.”

“Sometimes it does,” she said. “When I can actually help someone.”

“Was it because of your grandfather?”

Maggie thought about that for a moment. “I’m sure it was partly that, and partly that I knew my parents didn’t have the money for law school, even though they said they could swing it,” she said.

Boudreaux scratched at his eyebrow for a moment.

“I think it was also because I was afraid,” she said, and was surprised she said it.

“Really,” Boudreaux said, quietly. “Afraid of what?”

Maggie looked over at him and wondered why it was so easy to talk to him about things that were hard for her to talk about. In some respects, this relationship she shouldn’t be having was more comfortable than most.

“Everything,” she said.

Boudreaux stared at her for a moment. His eyes were piercing still, but there was kindness there, too. She’d seen it before.

“I’ve seen you act with a great deal of bravery, Maggie,” he said.

Maggie began to feel too inspected, and she looked out into the yard.

“But bravery isn’t the absence of fear, is it?” she asked. “It’s doing something regardless of fear, don’t you think?”

“Yes. I think that’s true.”

She looked back at him. “I think when something truly bad happens to you, something really scary, the knowledge never leaves you—the knowledge that bad things don’t just happen to other people. So it’s easy to be scared that they will happen.”

He stared at her, but said nothing. He reminded her of therapists on TV.

“It’s made me a bit of a paranoid mother,” Maggie said, and tried to smile.

“You’re a police officer,” Boudreaux said. “Even without what happened to you as a teenager, you’d have plenty of good reasons to fear for your children. In any event, we’re all afraid of something.”

“I suppose,” Maggie said. “What are you afraid of, Mr. Boudreaux?”

He idly rubbed at the edge of one eyebrow for a moment, then smiled at her. “I’m afraid of Miss Evangeline.”

She sort of smiled back. “Worried about the voodoo?”

“I once watched her stand up to my father,” he said. “The voodoo is far less frightening.”

Maggie took another sip of her juice, and her smile slowly faded. “Was my father your alibi, Mr. Boudreaux?”

He actually seemed surprised by that question. He put down his own glass. “No, he wasn’t.”

“Are you going to tell me who was?”

“No, I’m not.”

Maggie nodded, then stood up. “Well, I need to go.”

Boudreaux stood with her. “So soon?”

“I have to wrap up some paperwork, then I have a date with my dad,” she said. “We’re taking the kids out on the boat this afternoon.”

He nodded. “Well, I hope you have a good day,” he said.

She took the hand he held out, felt the old oystering callouses, felt the gentle squeeze before she let go.

“You, too, Mr. Boudreaux,” she said, then turned and headed back the way she’d come. When she rounded the corner, she looked back. He was still watching her, his hands in his pockets.

He really was a very interesting man.

A few hours later, Boudreaux was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs in the back yard, immersed in his favorite Faulkner, when he heard footsteps on the pavers.

He looked up, and she was standing there, the breeze brushing her long dark hair across her cheek.

“Hello,” she said, and there was a touch of discomfort in her green eyes.

He stood up, dropped his book down on the small table beside his chair.

“Hello, Mrs. Redmond,” he said politely.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “The woman who answered the door said you were back here.”

“It’s quite all right,” he said, then he waited. He had no desire to make her feel uncomfortable, but he really wasn’t quite sure what he should say.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said finally.

“For what?” he asked.

“For not saying anything,” she answered. “Although, I would have had to say something if this thing hadn’t been cleared up.”

“It wasn’t necessary,” he said.

She looked away, toward the mango trees, and caught the corner of her lower lip in her teeth. He thought, not for the first time, how much alike mother and daughter were.

“I would have had to do the right thing,” she said without looking at him. “I tried to do the right thing then.”

“So I heard,” he said. “I appreciate that, but it seems Sheriff Bradford had more loyalty to your father than he did to the law.”

She looked at him. “I’m sorry. Cops look out for each other. When they can.”

“Yes,” he said. “Nevertheless, it worked itself out.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and he remembered how she’d looked that night, so pretty and fresh and sad, so uncertain about a future married to her high school sweetheart. So lonely looking, standing there alone on the seawall where Riverfront Park was now.

It had started as a moderately chivalric desire to make sure she was all right, but then there’d gradually been less chivalry. He had wondered what it would be like to be with a good girl, and she had wondered what it would be like to be less good. He liked to think he wouldn’t have gone through with it if he’d known she was a virgin.

“Gray says that we’re going to need to tell her one day soon,” she said. She tried to smile, then looked away. “He thinks she’ll forgive us eventually.”

“He knows her well,” Boudreaux said. “He might be right.”

She gave a short laugh that had no humor in it. “She might eventually forgive me for what I did, but she’ll forgive Gray for lying to her all these years a whole lot faster. She’s her daddy’s girl, and I don’t mean that in a bitter way. She just is.”

Boudreaux swallowed, and worked at not having any expression at all on his face.

“Yes, she is,” he said.

She looked him in the eye then, and seemed to realize what she’d said. She opened her mouth as though to apologize, then shut it again. She looked away, but not before a tear fell from the corner of one eye.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Redmond?” he asked.

She looked back at him and smiled one of those smiles that women fake to look like they’re just fine.

“Yes. Thank you,” she said. “I need to go.”

“Thank you for coming by,” he said.

She nodded, then turned and walked away.

He watched her go, her gait so familiar to him, but only because it was Maggie’s. She’d meant nothing to him then, and he was ashamed to admit that she meant nothing to him now. But he did admire the way she loved his daughter.

Maggie stood in the stern of her father’s little twenty-footer, dumping more ice into the cooler to cover Sky’s decent-sized redfish.

Her sunglasses fell off of her face into the cooler, and she reached down and picked them up, then straightened up and wiped them on her shirt as she squinted over at her father.

Daddy was hunched over, deep in conversation with Kyle as they baited his hook. She couldn’t help but be reminded of similar trips years ago, and Daddy helping David with his line.

She put her sunglasses back on, passed behind Sky where she was standing at the portside rail, and sat back down on one of the cushioned gear boxes. She watched as her father clapped Kyle on the back and watched him cast his line.

She was still fairly certain that Boudreaux had told her some kind of half-truth about why he’d met her father that day on Lafayette Pier. She was also fairly certain that her father would tell her the same, or another, half-truth if she asked him about it.

She had trusted her father implicitly all of her life. Not once had she ever questioned his honesty. Nor had she ever doubted his love. If she questioned him about Boudreaux, he would be hurt, and maybe she would force him to lie. It would hurt him even more if he knew that she had begun to wonder about his involvement thirty-eight years ago, deep down in some place that even she had barely acknowledged.

As a rule, she didn’t believe in fathers and daughters keeping secrets from each other, but as he looked over his shoulder and smiled at her, his sandy hair blowing in the breeze, she decided that she would let these two secrets, his and hers, slip into the past untold.

Thank you so much for spending a little bit of
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